Utahisms, Slang, and Idioms to Tickle Your Fancy

One day while on a trip to a local convenient store for some soft drinks with my 16 year old niece, she turns to me and asked me about the origin of the phrase "Tickle Your Fancy".  To this, at the time, I did not have an answer.  The subject of origin stories of idioms and saying is something that does tickle my fancy.  I then later started looking into this particular origin.  The meaning of this phrase of course is to pique one’s interest Source: theidioms.com.

The Origin of the Saying

The term “tickles someone’s fancy” comes from Latin literature in the late 14th century, meaning “to touch to bring out the laughter.” It was later used to mean "arouse intense interest" in the book  "In the Light of Nature Pursued" by Abraham Tucker in the 17th century. Source: theidioms.com

Utahisms

Looking into this got me thinking about what are some specific regionalisms that are unique to Utah and what are there meanings? Here are some of the most popular:

• "Biff It" : (to fall, fail, trip, or make a mistake). The American Heritage Dictionary defines "biff" as an informal term for a punch or strike, or as a noun for a blow or punch.
• "Sluffing It" : (to be lazy or to skip or ditch something like school or a class). It is a misspelling of the word "Slough". The spelling change was made to differentiate between the meaning of "slough" as a snakeskin and its meaning as a bog. First known use of the word as a verb was in the 1930's to describe the shedding of something off.
• "Oh My Heck" :The Oxford English Dictionary defines “heck” as a euphemism for hell and is substituted by many Utahns to avoid swearing.
• "Fetch" : is commonly used as a substitute for an expletive that starts with the same letter, Odyssey Online says.
• "I've Got Shotgun!" : (the calling reservations for the front passenger seat in a vehicle). Commonly thought to originate from wild western times referring to the armed guard on a stagecoach, it was actually popularized in Hollywood Westerns and one of the earliest print references to "riding shotgun" was in a Utah newspaper in 1919.